A collection of twenty of Paglia's out-spoken essays on contemporary issues in America's ongoing cultural debate such as Anita Hill, Robert Mapplethorpe, the beauty myth, and the decline of education in America. From the Trade Paperback edition.

The bestselling author of Sexual Personae and Sex, Art, and American Culture is back with a fiery new collection of essays on everything from art and celebrity to gay activism, Lorena Bobbitt to Bill and Hillary. These essays have never appeared in book form, and many will be appearing in print for the first time. From the Trade Paperback edition.

The definitive Camille Paglia collection: a lavishly comprehensive volume of writing that spans twenty-five years of the intellectual firebrand’s influential career Much has changed since Camille Paglia first burst onto the scene with her groundbreaking Sexual Personae, but the laser-sharp insights of this major American thinker continue to be ahead of the curve—not only capturing the tone of the mo­ment but also often anticipating it. Opening with a blazing manifesto of an introduction in which Paglia outlines the bedrock beliefs that inform her writing—freedom of speech, the necessity of fearless inquiry, and a deep respect for all art, both erudite and popular—Provocations gathers together a rich, varied body of work that illumi­nates everything from the Odyssey to the Oscars, from punk rock to presidents past and present. Whatever your political inclination or liter­ary and artistic touchstones, Paglia’s takes are compulsively readable, thought provoking, gal­vanizing, and an essential part of our cultural dialogue, invariably giving voice to what most needs to be said.

View "Public Restrooms": A Photo Gallery in The Atlantic Monthly. So much happens in the public toilet that we never talk about. Finding the right door, waiting in line, and using the facilities are often undertaken with trepidation. Don't touch anything. Try not to smell. Avoid eye contact. And for men, don't look down or let your eyes stray. Even washing one's hands are tied to anxieties of disgust and humiliation. And yet other things also happen in these spaces: babies are changed, conversations are had, make-up is applied, and notes are scrawled for posterity. Beyond these private issues, there are also real public concerns: problems of public access, ecological waste, and—in many parts of the world--sanitation crises. At public events, why are women constantly waiting in long lines but not men? Where do the homeless go when cities decide to close public sites? Should bathrooms become standardized to accommodate the disabled? Is it possible to create a unisex bathroom for transgendered people? In Toilet, noted sociologist Harvey Molotch and Laura Norén bring together twelve essays by urbanists, historians and cultural analysts (among others) to shed light on the public restroom. These noted scholars offer an assessment of our historical and contemporary practices, showing us the intricate mechanisms through which even the physical design of restrooms—the configurations of stalls, the number of urinals, the placement of sinks, and the continuing segregation of women's and men's bathrooms—reflect and sustain our cultural attitudes towards gender, class, and disability. Based on a broad range of conceptual, political, and down-to-earth viewpoints, the original essays in this volume show how the bathroom—as a practical matter--reveals competing visions of pollution, danger and distinction. Although what happens in the toilet usually stays in the toilet, this brilliant, revelatory, and often funny book aims to bring it all out into the open, proving that profound and meaningful history can be made even in the can. Contributors: Ruth Barcan, Irus Braverman, Mary Ann Case, Olga Gershenson, Clara Greed, Zena Kamash,Terry Kogan, Harvey Molotch, Laura Norén, Barbara Penner, Brian Reynolds, and David Serlin.

Using criminological theories to hypothesize risk and prevention factors for sexual exploitation and abuse in UN peacekeeping missions, this book tests these factors in a mixed methods design with the case studies of the UN peacekeeping missions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Liberia, and the Golan Heights.

If the burlesque stripper, with her bawdy spirit and unruly insubordination, has emerged for many as a new 'empowering' model for the sexually aware woman, then she also strikes horror in the heart of second wave feminism. Embodied by high profile artistes such as Dita von Teese and Catherine d’Lish, the explosive revival of striptease, burlesque and overt female sexual performance has proved no less alluring to a new generation of women artists familiar with the provocative work of 70’s performance artists such as Hannah Wilke and Carolee Schneeman. Eloquent on ‘prettiness’ and power, desire and ‘knowingness’, money, sex and class, and with an extensive knowledge of burlesque’s rich tradition, Willson raises long overdue questions about women’s erotic expression within a ‘postfeminist’ condition. The ‘new burlesque’ demands above all a response - this fresh, brazen, provocative book at last provides it.

From the fiery intellectual provocateur - and one of our most fearless advocates of gender equality - a brilliant, urgent essay collection that both celebrates modern feminism and affirms the power of men and women and what we can accomplish together.

The edge of irony, says Linda Hutcheon, is always a social and political edge. Irony depends upon interpretation; it happens in the tricky, unpredictable space between expression and understanding. Irony's Edge is a fascinating, compulsively readable study of the myriad forms and the effects of irony. It sets out, for the first time, a sustained, clear analysis of the theory and the political contexts of irony, using a wide range of references from contemporary culture. Examples extend from Madonna to Wagner, from a clever quip in conversation to a contentious exhibition in a museum. Irony's Edge outlines and then challenges all the major existing theories of irony, providing the most comprehensive and critically challengin theory of irony to date.

What Women Want is a trenchant examination of the struggle for women's equality, and a prescription for what to focus on next in order to ensure maximum success. Feminism today is a movement that lacks leadership, unity, and definition, and it has gotten stuck in a boom and bust cycle when it comes to public opinion and action. Despite significant progress over the last fifty years, equality is still a distant goal in the political, social, and economic spheres. Only by identifying the barriers (both internal and external) that remain, Deborah Rhode argues, can we begin to identify solutions. A rigorously researched and well-written answer to the glut of gender-related books that have come onto the market recently, What Women Want comprehensively analyzes the challenges the feminist movement faces today. Combining sharp academic analysis and interviews with notable figures such as Sheryl Sandberg, Rhode focuses on five main topics: employment issues such as pay discrimination, work-life balance and the government's pitiful response, the assault on women's reproductive rights and the limits it places on their economic mobility, sexual harassment and violence, and the detrimental effect that the unfashionable label "feminist" can have, especially in attracting young women to the movement. Despite these formidable obstacles, the goals and principles of feminism are widely accepted by the American mainstream, and Rhode, herself a pathbreaker in the fields of law and education, offers effective strategies for redefining and advancing the feminist agenda, thereby creating a movement that truly recognizes, and is responsive to, what all women want.

Since the 1991 publication of his groundbreaking book Gay and Lesbian Themes in Latin American Writing, David William Foster has proposed a series of theoretical and critical principles for the analysis of Latin American culture from the perspectives of the queer. This book continues that project with a queer reading of literary and cultural aspects of Latin American texts. Moving beyond its predecessor, which provided an initial inventory of Latin American gay and lesbian writing, Sexual Textualities analyzes questions of gender representation in Latin American cultural productions to establish the interrelationships, tensions, and irresolvable conflicts between heterosexism and homoeroticism. The topics that Foster addresses include Eva Peron as a cultural/sexual icon, feminine pornography, Luis Humberto Hermosillo's classic gay film Doña Herlinda y su hijo, homoerotic writing and Chicano authors, Matias Montes Huidobro's Exilio and the representation of gay identity, representation of the body in Alejandra Pizarnik's poetry, and the crisis of masculinity in Argentine fiction from 1940 to 1960.